


Salty Bitters and Midnight Camomile

by solona



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Book VII: The Chariot, Comfort, Drinking, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Heartbreak, Post-Chariot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 18:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13793715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solona/pseuds/solona
Summary: “Why are you here, Julian?”He wasn’t sure he knew anymore.Julian returns to the apprentice's shop a few hours (and a few drinks!) after breaking it off at the docks.





	Salty Bitters and Midnight Camomile

**Author's Note:**

> Ft. my apprentice Ahnet.  
> I'll edit this more probably-- not super thrilled with the end particularly.  
> BIG thank you to the people who left feedback on my last arcana fic, you guys are like a solid 95% of the reason I wanted to write and post more.

He’d been drinking-- not as much as he could, Ahnet would later come to find out. (And not as much as he _would_ that night.) But the doctor was, in no uncertain terms, a good stones-throw past intoxicated. Why else would he be here? Her shop? Mere hours after that sheepish kiss that still smarted her cheek, after telling her she’d never see him again? His coat was buttoned… interestingly, and his hair was tousled. The ring of black under his eye was more bruised looking than usual-- perhaps because it was an actual bruise, if that soft glow under his collar was anything to go off of. “Ahnet…!” He seemed surprised she’d opened the door. It was, after all, pitch-dark late into the night. Though it’s not like either of them had been doing any sleeping. 

Julian shook his head vigorously, suddenly acutely conscious of his disheveled state. “I--” Was he getting choked up? Was he going to vomit on her doorstep? Either seemed possible-- likely, even. Julian sighed and sagged heavily against the doorframe, uneasy in his step. He rubbed his face with his gloved hands, hard, and righted himself after a moment. “Ahnet…” Funny, how Julian could spend the entire walk from The Raven to the shop rehearsing this speech, sometimes out loud, even—much to the chagrin of his fellow nocturnal vermin-- and manage to forget even its opening in the seconds it took Ahnet to open the door.     

Perhaps she was just that breathtaking. Oh, who was he fooling? She undoubtedly _was_ just that breathtaking. The way the light from the shop backlit her form in some fiery halo…. No. There was no place for that here. Not in this moment.

They stood there, too long, locked in a wordless gaze.

“Why are you here, Julian?”

He wasn’t sure he knew anymore. “I--” His eye was round and shining in the shop’s light. He felt… frighteningly disarmed by the question. Stripped. “I’m _weak_ , Ahnet. I am so _terribly_ _weak.”_

She eyed him for a moment, for the span of a breath, before turning her back to him. Ahnet stalked across the shop to the ring of keys Asra kept behind the counter. When she looked back she had to temper her surprise-- her disappointment that he hadn't followed her in. For the better, she knew. Yet still, in some strange way, it stung. _Eyes on the locks,_ she urged herself, a bit desperately, _look at anything but him, Ahnet._ “What you are,” she busied herself locking up the display case, “--is a self-deprecating--” A lock clicked. It was a satisfying sound, somehow. “--self-saboteur.” Another lock. She stopped, and met his eye, pointedly. Julian was still standing in her doorway, unmoving, but he watched her with a kind of forlorn longing she recognized as dangerous, especially in him. “You think you’ll make me unhappy, disappoint me? You think you’ll hurt me? That’s what people _do_ , Julian. It’s unavoidable-- and it’s _alright._ It’s ok.”  Embittered, she scoffed at the sharpness of her tone. Perhaps it was the slap in the face he needed, but she by no means relished the venom of it. Ahnet shook her head and continued closing up shop. Why they'd even opened today was beyond her. 

She was at the door then, fingers searching the key ring for the front door’s match with a fluidity of motion that could only come from repetition and the kind of sluggish pace that could only come from the truly and stubbornly hopeful. In some other world, this would end the same way the docks did-- with a sudden and blistering outburst of untempered passion, chased hard and fast by regret and loneliness. The idea of him entering her shop, pulling her against him…. It was tempting. And the idea of where that same passion left unchecked might lead them in such a frenzy was…. Well, it was especially tantalizing. But that couldn’t be how this went-- for either of them. The regret… it wasn’t something she wanted for him, for herself. Julian needed the dignity that came with walking away, and he deserved the dignity of coming back in the sobering light of day if he so chose.

Julian teetered on that threshold, caught between and betwixt, Ahnet before him. She held the key in her hand, but her eyes were on him. There was a weight to them, to that disarming stare. “I have to lock up now. We’re long past closed,” she told him, her voice so steady it nearly gutted him to hear its alien dissimilarity to that violent storm raging in his chest. But… more than anything, any bitterness or envy he might feel, Julian felt comfort in her resolve, in her wellbeing. He would never… he would never want the toxicity of his particular emotional cocktail for her. He knew that.

Julian’s eye snapped up from the hole it bore into the line of stone separating her shop from the rest of Vesuvia common and met her steely gaze-- no, her eyes were warmer, softer than her words conveyed. But still, they held that dark over-wash of decision in them. She was… Ahnet held that inner strength, that character and sense of resolve Julian had never managed to find in himself. He admired her in that-- that and so, so much more. Julian bit his lip, perhaps harder than he should have. Julian knew what she was telling him-- that now was the precipice, that now was his moment to make a decision. Was he in or was he out? Was he prepared to alienate his greatest (and, gods did he hate himself, most beautiful) ally? Julian found his voice: it was caught in his throat, lodged deep and concrete.  _Why don’t you move, damn you? Why don’t you speak?_

If Ahnet lingered in that doorway, caught in his struggle, whipped up momentarily in his vortex of turmoil and tribulation, Julian told himself he’d imagined it, that he’d willed it into his own false perception of reality. No. Ahnet was much too strong for that. She didn’t wallow and stagnate in indecision like he did. She would never curse herself in such a way. The night sucked the heat from his skin, even with his many layers. It was a desolate black, and the warmth and light from her shop was a tantalizing disparity. Yet the dark, the cold, that guileless black… it had is own kind of gravitational pull on him-- it always had-- and Julian felt himself take half a step back, removing his foot from her doorway.

Ahnet licked her lips, mouth a bit dry suddenly. She blinked, if only to take her eyes from him. Julian looked up at her for the briefest of instances, before casting his gaze hard back down. He looked troubled, but no longer did he look a man ravaged by shameful indecision. If she could give him only that… that small dignity, then she had too. Didn't she? Ahnet released a breath slowly, and closed the door in front of him. It creaked softly, a cutting and solitary sound in that night.

* * *

  

For monuments immeasurable, Julian stood on that porch, nose inches from that shut door, his eye burying into that crack of light bleeding out from beneath her shop’s door. Julian could feel the warmth, he imagined, from the shop still, when he looked at it. He remained, immovable, searching to find the heavy _click_ of the locks in so much harsh silence. He strained to make out any trace sound of Ahnet’s half-whispered spells. In his mind’s eye, he watched her trace her sigils and cast her protections so routinely. She was strong. Stronger than he could be, could ever become. To turn him away… Julian would never have been able to do the same in her place. He’d tried. He’d tried so _hard_ , and he’d failed-- quite miserably, if he did say so himself. He’d come back, crawling, only a breath and a half later, desperate and raw, wanting only _her_.

She was gone, somehow, he sensed it-- or, less romanticly, perhaps the extinguishing of the shop's lamp tipped him off. It left Julian listening to the sound of his own breath just under the pounding of his heart and the pressing silence of the night he’d banished himself into.

 _I can’t stay,_ he repeated, mouthing silently the words still wedged so deep down his throat. _You can’t stay, Julian._ _You know you could never give her what she needs. Never be enough._ A fugitive, a dead man… what could he have ever thought he’d had to give her? No, all he could do was _take_ , he knew this. He was as much a leech as he’d thought he might find a cure in all those years ago. _Do her this kindness and leave._ Yet, for what felt like the longest and most unbearable passage of time, he could not convince his legs of what he’d convinced his brain. And as for his heart…. Well, that was as stubborn an organ as they come, a doctor should know as much.

* * *

 

Ahnet, in like, stood motionless before that heavy, heavy door. With a sigh, she pressed her forehead against the cool wood. She was bone tired from the day already. And in wake of the tumult of emotion from the night, that exhaustion had sunk deep into her marrow. Ahnet whispered the wards Asra had taught her all those years ago, tracing sigils into the wood’s grain. It was calming. Soothing, even. There, done. Ahnet felt… well, heartsick as ever, but somehow, even with the weight of it all, she felt better… or at the very least, she felt at peace with the moment.

There was a creak from the stairs. Asra… the absolute _snoop_ , how had she not noticed his aura? He had taught her better than that. “Asra-- I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Ahnet apologized, a hand twisted in her hair, her embarrassment palpable.

“Ahnet.” Asra climbed down the stairs with a quilt from his bed over his shoulders like a shawl. “Was that--?”

She nodded, throat suddenly, massively tight.

“Ah.” Asra’s gaze softened. He rubbed a hand into her shoulder softly, knowingly almost, and offered her a fistful of the blanket. Ahnet graciously wrapped it around herself. Asra was warm and familiar against her side, and the quilt around her shoulders radiated his heat. And was that Faust she felt wriggling somewhere in there? She soaked up the warmth gladly and leaned her head, suddenly so heavy, against her teacher. As much as Ahnet could feel stifled by the magician... Asra was her greatest friend and staunch protector. She owned him much-- so much it strained the relationship at times, but now, selfishly, Ahnet sought comfort in him for what might well have been the millionth time.

“I--” She laughed at herself, “It’s silly… I didn’t know him long but… I just feel so…” Ahnet struggled for the word before abandoning the venture. There would _never_ be words enough to describe Doctor Julian Devorak, fugitive extraordinaire. She simply shrugged into Asra’s embrace. Wrapped up in all this warmth, all this comfort… did Julian have anyone he could go to? Would anyone be there for him to lean on? To take care of him the way Asra did her? Ahnet knew the answer, and it left a black pit in her heart.

“Ilya is… just a lot, emotionally. I can understand.” Asra pressed his forehead into her hair affectionately for a moment. “Come on. I’ll make us some more tea,” he beamed at her, with that smile always so full of warmth and light. Faust poked her head out at the mention of tea, no doubt eager to wrap herself around another warm kettle. “Nothing like some good midnight chamomile, after all, Ahnet.” She felt better just seeing that smile of his, hearing it in his voice. “Then maybe we can get some sleep,” Asra yawned. He gave one of the shadows beneath her eyes a soft poke and Ahnet couldn’t help but smile, a small laugh escaping her. Asra was better to her then she deserved. Faust flicked her tongue against her cheek. Even the snake was too good to her.

“That sounds--” she searched for the words to convey the tenderness she felt in the moment with little luck, “--nice. Thank you, Asra.”

It wasn’t long before Ahnet, with Asra beside her and a steaming cup between her hands, felt warmth trickling back into her. She would not sleep well-- but she would sleep, and that was, in and of itself, a greater blessing than deserved.

* * *

 

          At The Rowdy Raven, Julian sat alone, tucked away in his corner booth, his second Salty Bitter in hand. His body was heavy with exhaustion, beaten down-- emotionally, physically-- who could say which bit the hardest? Who was he fooling… he knew very well what plagued him. He’d wasted his last chance with indecision and petrification.

Sleep would not catch him this night, another curse well-earned.

 


End file.
